Posts tagged with: Gender role

During last night’s Oscar ceremony, Best Supporting Actress winner Patricia Arquette used her acceptance speech to rail against unfair pay for women:

To every women who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time … to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.

The wage equality that Arquette is referring to is the gender wage gap—the difference between male and female earnings expressed as a percentage of male earnings. Because she frames the issue as a matter of equal rights, Arquette presumably believes that the problem is caused by intentional discrimination.

The gender wage gap certainly exists, but there is considerable debate about the size of the gap and whether it is caused primary by discrimination or by other factors, such as education and work hours. Much of the confusion is caused by the use of misleading statistics by politically motivated groups. For example, last night the Department of Labor (DOL) posted on their Twitter account:(more…)

Gender disparity in pay has been discussed ad nauseum, especially given that the facts are that women really don’t get paid less than men, taking into account real life circumstances. But are there factors that hold women back? Women still tend to choose lower-paying jobs, and are more likely to leave the job market than men. Less than 5 percent of our nation’s leading CEOs and corporate leaders are female. What’s behind this?

Abby M. McCloskey, program director of economic policy at the American Enterprise Institute, shares a few ideas in this brief video.

By Presidential Proclamation, today is “Equal Pay Day,” a day meant to draw attention to the “fact” that women still aren’t getting paid the same as men. No matter how hard we try, we just can’t seem to catch up. 77 cents on the dollar – that’s where we ladies are sitting and stagnating.

Except it’s a myth. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Mark J. Perry and Andrew G. Biggs tear this disparity issue apart. It’s not simply a matter of who is getting paid how much for which job; there are a number of factors that must be examined. And once they are, Perry and Briggs say that equal pay for equal work is a myth.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics seems to uphold the idea that women still aren’t getting paid enough.

In its annual report, “Highlights of Women’s Earnings in 2012,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that “In 2012, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings of $691. On average in 2012, women made about 81% of the median earnings of male full-time wage and salary workers ($854).”

My persuasion can build a nation Endless power With our love we can devour You’ll do anything for me

-Beyonce, “Run the World (Girls)”

That’s the apparent fantasy of Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky of Illinois. She recently hosted her annual fundraising luncheon, with guest speaker, Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards. Schakowsky said, “humanity is at a crossroads on this small planet and that our survival as a species is dependent on women taking charge, taking the world in our own hands.”

If forensic psychologist and men’s rights activist Helen Smith is correct, Schakowsky and her friends may have their hands full of the world, and sooner than they think. In her upcoming book Men on Strike, Smith offers up statistics and her own research to suggest that men are consciously boycotting marriage, fatherhood, and the “American Dream” because they feel beaten down by politically correct preferences and practices—in school, in the workplace, and in society in general. If the women want the world and all the power, the thinking goes, they can have it; the men will simply retire to whatever man-caves they are permitted.

Women, hyper-focused on “having it all”, are the ones who are now commitment-phobic, Scalia states. Driven by a desire for power that they perceive only men to have, women have managed to leave men “behind and lonely”, fearful of being “devoured” by women who won’t tolerate anyone standing in their way. Gender politics, as Scalia points out, is very complex: we can’t figure out if women should run it all or be removed from the scene before they are even born.